CONFERENCE: The XX Colloquium on Mexican Literature, Canon Perdido

November 10, 2016 from 4:30 pm

With every year, we the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UCSB, and the members of UC Mexicanistas take on themes related to literature, culture, history, and language. This time, the theme of the reunion will take an episode of the Santa Barbara history known as Canon Perdido. The loss of the Spanish letter ‘ñ’ creates a different meaning from cañón to canon. Thus reinforced with the adjective “perdido” (lost), the expression produces a play on words with the literary canon and its historical change: from being ample, it becomes shortened and gives room to substitutions and permanent changes achieved by the readers. Therefore, this year we feel the need to take a step back, and talk about cañón and canon, we think that we must go to the basics—if you will—and question the canon itself. Yes, the literary canon, and many are quick to ask: why talk about the canon and what is the canon nowadays?

The question here is: is the canon perdido? [Spanish for lost], and if it’s lost, then who lost it? Those are some of the central questions that this conference aims to explore: how can one break, change, renovate, ignore, improve, and alter the Mexican literary canon? And we specially want to know which writers are doing it or have done it. Nonetheless, it is rather unfair, to limit our conference strictly to literature, we also seek to explore within, or outside, if you will, the other arts. As always, we aim to bring the wider Santa Barbara community closer to the academic community that examines and connects history to literature, while also responding to the Hispanic context within UCSB.

This edition of the 20 year long iconic Colloquium on Mexican Literature is excited to announce acclaimed Mexican author and journalist Juan Villoro (Premio Excelncia José Emilio Pacheco 2015, The Herald Novel Award 2014, Xavier Villaurrutia Award 1999), as the main visiting author, and who will be giving his “Actualidad del pasado, novedad del futuro. El periodismo cultural de José Emilio Pacheco.” The colloquium also has the honor to welcome back, once again, authors Pedro Ángel Palou, Rosa Beltrán, and Hernán Lara Zavala, who will also be presenting and leading discussion panels. Along with the talks and conference, of this now international colloquium, a series of book presentations by the visiting authors.